Tyler Rich Has Family + Friends Who Lost Everything in California Wildfires

California native Tyler Rich knows all too well about the devastation wildfires can bring. The 2018 wildfire season currently rampaging across the state is the most destructive on record, and in an interview with Taste of Country ahead of the 2018 CMA Awards, the singer revealed he knows many people who have lost everything in the California fires.

"[My] family is okay, a bunch of family friends and friends ... they evacuated in time," he says. "The Paradise Fire up in Northern California is about 30 minutes from home, and they got out, but everything's gone. Paradise, the whole city is pretty much gone."

While "The Difference" singer is thankful everyone he knows is safe, he says it's impossible to understand what those who have lost everything are going through.

Miley Cyrus is among the celebrities to lose a home in the California fires, which have so far claimed 84 lives, according to the latest confirmed statistics from ABC News. More than 800 others remain unaccounted for as multiple fires continue to rage across the drought-plagued state.

"When you are walking through the house and it’s charred, black as black everywhere you look, water’s dripping and the firefighters have left, I remember thinking, 'I was just in here getting ready for school…'" he recalls, adding, "It gives me chills."

Urban says one good thing that can come from that kind of hardship is a sense of a community coming together to help in its wake. "You are seeing that out in California right now, and it's amazing," he says.